


petrichor

by ladanse



Category: Raven Cycle - Maggie Stiefvater
Genre: M/M, Truth or Dare, Underage Drinking, chainsaw ships it, for a writing prompt, this got long oops
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2016-10-08
Updated: 2016-10-08
Packaged: 2018-08-20 07:42:55
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 1,629
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/8241676
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/ladanse/pseuds/ladanse
Summary: Kiss me, Adam wants to say, suddenly. He swallows, and opens his mouth, searching for something else to say, and then - "Kiss me."No one says anything for a moment; the breathing of the Barns animals is suddenly loud in the ringing silence.





	

**Author's Note:**

> for the prompt: "pynch + truth or dare"
> 
> :) hope y'all enjoy!

The Barns is sharp with the smell of wood grain and dust; Adam tries and fails not to inhale too deeply the scent of the rainstorm.

 

“I guess we’re stuck here, then,” he says. “Unless you can dream the storm away.”

 

Ronan, leaning against a half-awake milk cow with a teardrop of a dream in his lap, blinks up at him, coming back to late-night Ronan and away from the strangeness of the dream-thing they made together.

 

“Not in the mood, Parrish,” he drawls, eyes lazy and bright. “Let’s have a sleepover.”

 

“The storm won’t last that long,” says Adam, prickling. He’s not sure why Ronan’s casual disregard of the fact that he has a shift to get to rankles at him; he knows that Ronan cares more than he’ll ever show. Then again, most things about Ronan get under his skin - even the lotion Ronan dreamed him makes his fingers twitch, never mind how well it works on his cracked skin.

 

“Who cares?” says Ronan, predictably. “Stay over. I’m not driving through this storm or the shitty puddles it’s gonna make.”

 

“I can drive,” says Adam, half-heartedly. Ronan ignores him in favor of calling Chainsaw to his shoulder; she squawks his name as she settles on his flexed forearm.

 

Adam sighs at him, watching him stroke Chainsaw’s soft wings (at least, he imagines they’re soft; he’s never presumed to touch her. It would be - too close, he tells himself).

 

“Fine, Lynch,” he says, letting out a breath and slumping comfortably against a pile of hay. “Whatever you want.” It scares him, suddenly, how much he means that, and he looks at anything else. The softly huffing animals, the leftover (and clearly dreamed) farming tools.

 

“Truth or dare, Parrish?”

 

Adam meets Ronan’s eyes again. “What?”

 

Ronan’s eyes are daring and mischievous. He reaches back to rub at his tattoo, a familiar gesture, and asks again, “Truth or dare?” Adam doesn’t respond. “It’s a sleepover, Parrish,” he says, patiently. “Adam.”

 

The use of his given name brings Adam’s brain back from the stark lines of ink against Ronan’s dark skin. “Fine, _Ronan_ ,” he retaliates. “Dare.”

 

Ronan’s eyes gleam with satisfaction; both of them know that this whole game is a dare, and Adam just waived his rights to chicken out.

 

“Sing the murder squash song,” says Ronan.

 

Adam stares. “No,” he says, the pitch of his voice going from relaxed to outraged in the space of a breath. “No way.”

 

“It’s part of the game, Parrish. Sing.”

 

“My - I can’t sing, Ronan,” says Adam. _Not like you can_.

 

“Too bad. I wanna hear you butcher it,” says Ronan.

 

That, more than anything else, causes Adam to open his mouth, and Ronan laughs, knowing he’s goaded Adam right into his hands.

 

Adam doesn’t know all of the words, and probably only half of the melody, but he has the (goddamn annoying) chorus down pat. By the time he’s made it through the first two verses, Ronan is laughing and grimacing painfully in turn.

 

“Enough, enough, Jesus,” says Ronan. “Your turn.”

 

“Truth or dare, Lynch,” says Adam, sitting up and crossing his legs.

 

“Dare,” says Ronan, to no one’s surprise.

 

Adam considers. “Dream a shot of whiskey,” he says, “and drink it.”

 

Ronan’s gaze is disappointed. “You can do better than that,” he says, leaning back and closing his eyes. Less than a minute later, a shot appears in his hand; he wakes and knocks it back.

 

“Truth or dare?”

 

“Dare,” says Adam again.

 

“Come pet Chainsaw.”

 

“What?”

 

“You were looking at her earlier,” says Ronan, and this is the closest either of them has come to acknowledging how closely Ronan watches him, and Adam forgets to protest.

 

“Where?” he asks, hand poised in midair. Chainsaw side-eyes him, feathers puffing up just slightly.

 

Ronan soothes her with a touch of his fingers. “Here,” he says, guiding Adam’s hand with fingers hooking around his wrist. “Start with the back.”

 

“All right,” says Adam, moving slowly under Chainsaw’s watchful gaze. Both of their voices have gone quiet; they are too close, and Adam keeps his eyes carefully on the raven.

 

Her feathers are softer than he imagined. He tells this to Ronan as he runs his fingers across the line of her back, the down at her neck.

 

“Yeah,” says Ronan, trying for nonchalance and failing spectacularly as his voice cracks. He clears his throat. “Under her wings is the softest.”

 

Adam forces himself to meet Ronan’s eyes, less than a foot away. “Truth or dare?” he asks softly.

 

“Truth,” says Ronan, and Adam blinks. So does Ronan, like he hadn’t quite meant to say that.

 

Adam sits back, and both of them relax just slightly. _Why do you stare at me_ , Adam means to ask. _Why don’t you just take you want?_ Instead, what comes out is, “Did you and Kavinsky do it?”

 

“What?” says Ronan. His voice is suddenly loud, and it breaks the quiet tension into a loud one.

 

“In the back of one of his Mitsubishis,” says Adam. “Or whatever.”

 

Ronan looks at him for a second, jaw clenching. “No,” he says, finally. “I have _standards_.”

 

“Right,” says Adam, embarrassed. He didn’t mean to say that - he didn’t even care, really - why did he have to poke instead of leaving well enough alone -

 

“Why do you want to know, anyway,” asks Ronan, and his voice is a little angry.

 

“I haven’t said truth,” says Adam, instead of answering.

 

“Truth or dare, Parrish.” Ronan’s voice is dark.

 

“Truth,” Adam says anyway. It feels like a dare.

 

Ronan takes a breath, and then - “Why did you never leave?”

 

Adam doesn’t need to ask what he’s talking about. “Why did you punch out my dad?” he says, instead.

 

“It’s my turn, Parrish.”

 

“I didn’t know how to,” says Adam. His life has always been about debt and credit and payment; he owes Ronan for his honesty, for only being angry with him instead of walking out of the room. “I wanted to keep my mom safe. I don’t know. Don’t ask me.”

 

“Don’t ask me,” Ronan parrots back softly, and Adam breathes out.

 

“Okay,” he says. “Truth or dare?”

 

“Dare.”

 

“Dream a new license plate for the Pig,” says Adam. It’s stupid, but the air in the Barns is too musty, clogging up his lungs and throat. He wants the easy silence of the storm back.

 

Ronan’s lips quirk slightly. “What should it say?”

 

“Dick,” says Adam, just to be a dick.

 

Ronan’s lips are now a grin. “Gansey’ll love it,” he says, and closes his eyes. When he opens them, there is a true-to-form license plate in his hand. “I’ll put it on the Pig tomorrow,” he says, and Adam can’t help laughing a little.

 

“Your turn.”

 

“Truth or dare?”

 

“Truth,” says Adam. He feels like he does when he corrects the ley line and Cabeswater hums through him; like he can be powerful and unafraid.

 

“Blue,” says Ronan after a moment’s hesitation. “Did you - ” he trails off. “Never mind.”

 

“It’s all right,” says Adam. “I liked her, if that’s what you’re asking.”

 

“But?” asks Ronan before he can remember that he doesn’t care.

 

“But nothing, really. She’s hung up on Gansey, now, anyway,” says Adam. The bitterness creeps into his voice; not about Blue, but about Gansey, who gets everything Adam can’t.

 

Ronan looks like he sympathizes. “Well, they’re meant for each other, anyway,” he says. “Dick and Jane.”

 

A laugh chokes its way out of Adam’s throat.

 

“Why does he call her that?” muses Ronan rhetorically.

 

“It’s better than _maggot_ ,” Adam points out.

 

“Yeah, but she likes me the least, so it doesn’t matter when I do it,” says Ronan, unperturbed.

 

“It’s because you’re the same, sometimes,” says Adam before he can stop himself.

 

Ronan’s eyes smile. “I’ll take that as a compliment,” and Adam realizes the comparison he just made - and with what he said about Blue -

 

“Jesus, Parrish, stop panicking,” says Ronan. His gaze is bittersweet. “We don’t need to talk about it.”

 

“I - I don’t - ” starts Adam. He takes a deep breath. “Okay. Not-talking, then.”

 

“It’s your turn,” says Ronan, instead of responding.

 

“Truth or dare?”

 

“Dare.”

 

 _Kiss me_ , Adam wants to say, suddenly. He swallows, and opens his mouth, searching for something else to say, and then - “Kiss me.”

 

No one says anything for a moment; the breathing of the Barns animals is suddenly loud in the ringing silence.

 

“What,” says Ronan, carefully.

 

“I - ”

 

Adam looks up, looks at Ronan’s face, the ill-disguised hope in his expression and the way his hand rubs at the ink on his neck, and suddenly thinks, _oh_.

 

“It’s part of the game, Lynch,” he says, meeting Ronan’s eyes steadily.

 

“All right,” says Ronan, disbelieving. He leans forward, presses his lips to Adam’s, dry, soft, quick. “There.”

 

“You can do better than that,” says Adam, opening his eyes. He’s not sure why he closed them.

 

Chainsaw squawks, “ _Kerah_ ,” startling them both. She flies off Ronan’s arm to a nearby rafter, and makes a strange noise that might be a laugh.

 

“She likes you,” says Ronan, wonderingly. “Normally she doesn’t like when I - doesn’t like me touching people.”

 

“She likes me,” and the emphasis on _she_ comes out against Adam’s will.

 

Ronan rolls her eyes. “That was cheap, Parrish,” he says, but he leans in anyway, letting their noses brush against each other. Adam can feel Ronan’s breath on his cheek, the way his whole body is steadily tensing and relaxing, over and over.

 

Adam closes the gap. Ronan’s shoulders slump with relief, and his hands reach up to brush across Adam’s shoulders, frame his face.

 

“Stay over,” says Ronan, between breaths. “Fuck your shift.”

 

“Okay,” says Adam, his skin not itching for the first time in - for the first time. “Okay.”

 


End file.
